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America Will Sit Down For “Downton Abbey” Tonight

Like so many other Januarys over the past years James and I will sit down tonight to once again rejoice in a great television program. Sadly, however, this is the last season for Downton Abbey.

Fans have been there from the start of the first episode when the Crawley family sat around the table reading a newspaper account of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. This year the final season takes places in 1925. Over the many episodes there was no way not to be swept up in the lives of the family who lived upstairs or by the bevy of staff and servants who worked downstairs at Downton.

What I have marveled at over the years this show has been a world-wide phenomenon is how continuously the themes of how the aristocracy lived and adapted through changing times was so creatively presented. Every line in the scripts are placed for a certain effect. There is no wasted chatter. That the creator of the show, Julian Fellowes, is the show’s sole writer is mind-boggling.

Tonight we will watch and smile and know that soon this series will be but a nice memory. But it also reminds us of the power of television if only the ones with the will to make grand things happen are given a chance to succeed.